The Dragoons in the Canadas

The 19th Light Dragoons were ordered overseas as part of a general reinforcement of the Canadian command in early 1813. Also ordered from Britain were the 13th, 70th, 89th, 88th, and 103rd Regiments of Foot, the foreign corps of de Watteville and de Meuron, a company of the Royal Artillery, and members of the Royal Corps of Drivers and Royal Sappers and Miners. The Dragoons were among the earliest to sail, leaving Cork Ireland in April 1813 with 550 men in the company of the second battalion, 41st Foot.

The regiment’s officers represented the social mixture of Britain’s ruling classes. Lieutenant Benjamin Burton had taken only three months leave from the 19th in the seven years before 1814. Captain James Verner had served on the East Indian Army Staff and, when his troop was not ordered overseas in 1813, joined the six troops sent to Canada as a volunteer. Captain Alexander Anderson was present as was the Regimental surgeon John Murray, likewise serving as the corps’ assistant-surgeon throughout its service on the subcontinent. Lieutenant John Lang joined the Dragoons aboard the HMS Majestic on 5 April 1813. With him were Lieutenant-Colonel Richard O’Neill, Captain George Austin Moultrie, and Lieutenants J.R. Eustace and William Rhodes. Though weather delayed the convoy’s departure until 17 April.

The crossing of the Atlantic was uneventful. A man falling overboard, to be rescued by sailors, was one of the few entries made at this time. On 8 May, cod and halibut were caught off the Grand Banks, and three days later the convoy entered the St. Lawrence. The placidity of the voyage was perhaps providential, for the cold of a North Atlantic crossing in early spring made great physical exertion almost impossible. "The cold of this day," Lang wrote as the ship passed the southern coast of Newfoundland on 10 May, "was more severe than anything I ever experienced before and was accompanied with a drowness [drowsiness?] and stupefaction which it is hardly possible to bear up against."

Canadian pilots joined the convoy on 12 May. The travelers were 200 miles up river when civilization came into view on 15 May as they were entering the Quebec basin. The regiment came ashore on 16 May, the men being quartered in the Quebe city Citadels extensive barracks, the horses in the chateau’s riding school, and the officers in "very good accommodation at the two principal inns. Military duty at Quebec was light for the Dragoons. A charge of 8 shillings per bottle for madiera and port, 9 shillings for the claret, and 6 shillings 8 pence for three meals per day and a bed for the officers at the Inn.

By late May 1813 the war’s second campaign was already underway, and already going badly for the British. The capital of Upper Canada, York, had been captured, looted and burned, and Fort George, guarding the entrance to the Niagara River from Lake Ontario, would soon share a similar fate. Thus it was not surprising that the Light Dragoons should have barely gotten ashore at Quebec when they were ordered to march west. The haste with which the passage was to be made meant that the horses would not immediately accompany the regiment, while if the transports became becalmed for more than two consecutive days, the troopers were to disembark and proceed on foot.8 Save for men detached to tend to the horses left behind, the entire regiment embarked on heavily crowded transports on 18 May, the discomfort of which situation can only have been confounded by an unidentified general officer’s admission that while the transports carried three days’ provisions, the voyage was likely to take as many weeks. Cramped into small transports, complete with kit and women, the fact that the horses were left behind could have been the only saving grace of quarters that were very close indeed.

19 May, one day after embarkation, the regiment was sending ashore for supplementary provisions, only to meet with minimal if any success. The more general shortage of supplies was due to the bad harvest of 1812. Despite this, on the morning of 20 May, Mrs. Rathbone, wife of Lieutenant James Rathbone, was able to provide the officers with a hearty breakfast of eggs and milk. 21 May the regiment disembarked at Ste. Anne’s as per its orders, the transport having lain becalmed for two consecutive days in the river. Carts for the voyage were procured with billets for the men, as well as a bullock and two rations of bread per man.

After four days on the march, the regiment neared Trois Rivieres. One must pity the cavalrymen as, barely ten days in Canada and with yet a hair of the enemy in sight, they covered upwards of twenty miles a day in warm weather through rough countryside on bad roads with little or no provisions, all without the benefit of their mounts. At Trois Rivieres a welcome change awaited the troopers. On 26 May the regiment boarded the one steamer then operating on the St. Lawrence, bound for Montreal:

Lieutenant Lang accompanied Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Bruyeres of the Royal Engineers ashore at Sorel on the afternoon of 27 May, writing afterward: 'I learnt from him that it had been a thriving place before the war, but as its principal trade was carried on with the state of New York by the river Richelieu at the mouth of which it stands, it is falling off every day in consequence of the war.'

Disembarking at 6:00 am on 28 May, the Dragoons remained in Montreal until 16 July. Militarily, Montreal was far less impressive than Quebec. However very good accommodations could be found in the city’s boarding houses, beds and meals purchased by officers at a rate no higher than that of the town’s hotels. The savings came at a cost, in particular that of being "tormented by bugs." A social milieu could be found in Montreal. The city of merchants contrasted starkly with Quebec’s population of bureaucrats, if for obvious reasons. The principal society of the place, of which the best is the military, next to them the British merchants and residents and the French Canadians. The latter two seldom mix together, but the military were on good terms with both. Even the most serious military matters, therefore, had in Montreal a feel of Vauxhall Gardens rather than the Horse Guards. A garrison parade was performed on the evening of 6 June 1813. The General inspected the regiment. All the beauty and fashion of the place were assembled on the occasion on horseback, which is the usual mode for Canadian Ladies to take the air in summer. The majority of the Dragoon officers time was spent socializing and dining at the Baroness Lougeuil’s estate on St. Helen’s Island --- "a perfect paradise" --- not to mention picnics on the Mountain and strawberry parties on Nun’s Island.

It was in Montreal that Colonel O'neill, just two days after the regiment’s arrival encountered a feature unique to the Empire’s Canadian possessions: Native American warriors. After church we went with the Colonel to see a body of Indian warriors who had just come to town with their wives and families. They collected around us and showed much surprise and admiration at our dress. One of their chiefs addressed us in a long speech not one word of which we could understand, but a gentleman who knew the language told us it was whether we came from their good father across [the] seas and if we were come to assist them to drink the blood of their enemies. We told them (through our interpreter) that we were and we then were obliged to shake hands with the whole circle and they got so fond of us that it was with some difficulty we could get away from them.

The actual celebration of the King’s birthday on 4 June was cancelled when it was learned American forces were approaching Montreal. Aside from the impropriety of holding ceremonial parades with the enemy so near, Major-General Francis de Rottenburg feared that any parades would expose the numerical weakness of his command. To meet the attack, the 19th detached a sergeant and a farrier with a troop of volunteer cavalry that went out to reconnoiter the enemy, while, much to their chagrin, the remainder of the regiment surrendered their swords and carbines for muskets. The alarm being lifted on the morning of the 5th, "we gave up our muskets, much to the satisfaction of our men." The alarm of 4 June was an unwelcome reminder that a state of war existed between the British Empire and the American Republic, regimental duties of a more mundane manner likewise prevented the 19th’s sojourn in Montreal from becoming one uninterrupted season of social frivolity.

Horses were of particular concern to the officers, if only to prevent the regiment from being forced to serve dismounted. In ordering the 19th to Canada Colonial Secretary Lord Bathurst had "thought it … expedient" to send 150 horses with the corps for its commissioned and non-commissioned officers, hoping that Prevost would "have collected a supply of horses requisite for the men" by the time of the regiment’s arrival. Thus while it was noted that the general health of the horses on the regiment’s arrival at Quebec was good, the truth was that the 19th lacked sufficient horseflesh for its rankers. Indeed, the alarm of 4 June merely foreshadowed the fact that, due to a shortage of horses that would plague the regiment throughout its service in the Canadas, the troopers were often to find themselves serving on foot with the infantry. It was not that horses were rare in the provinces. Rather, the quality of what mounts were available did not impress the Army. Colonel O’Neill was especially sensitive regarding mounts and 100 horses were gathered for the regiment.. Nor did the regiment’s problems end once horses of suitable quality were found. Veterinary Surgeon Bird struggled to provide the corps with adequate horseshoes and medicines, and found the cost of the latter "three times as high in Canada as in England."

The First Troop of the 19th had already marched for Kingston, and on 7 July was ordered to join the Centre Division "as soon as sufficient number of horses are received from Montreal.

15 Four days later the entire regiment received orders for the upper province, and departed Montreal at 6 am on 16 July. It was now that the officers and men of the 19th realized the travellers’ horror stories for which Upper Canada was justly infamous. About two miles beyond Cateau, it became necessary to embark the cart which carried our oats and baggage on board of a batteau to go the next twenty four miles, the road being through a swamp totally impassable for any kind of wheel carriage, and nearly so for horses. At one place the swamp is so bad that we were obliged to keep out in the Lake to avoid being smothered in the mud, up to our saddle skirts in water and often swimming the horses for quarter of a mile. At all times their footing was precarious from the number of roots and half sunk timber. In this way we passed through the water for six miles. The next eighteen miles was through a swampy wood where we were often in danger of losing our horses in the mud-holes which was up to their bellies every step. To add to our misfortunes it poured rain upon us the whole of the day in torrents. Nor did matters improve appreciably with day’s end. Officers and men alike "wet to the skin [and] covered with mud," the corps discovered that their baggage batteau had not arrived by the time they reached their quarters for the night. How their host reacted to the arrival of the soaked and muddy Dragoons who he was legally obligated to billet can only be imagined. His concern at being required to provide a greatcoat a piece to the bedraggled troopers was however probably nothing compared to his efforts to keep the women of the house in doors when, in a scene reminiscent of War and Peace, the officers and men "went to the river where we stripped, bathed, and washed the mud off our clothes and appointments." Wretched weather and the failure of the bateau bearing fresh clothing to arrive until next morning made 17 July 1813 one of the most inglorious in the history of the regiment: "We were forced to sit in nothing but the linsey-woolsey greatcoats for the remainder of the evening."

By 20 July, the regiment was finally nearing its destination, though it now seemed barely able to move. "The last fourteen miles," wrote Lang of the march to Ganannoque, "the Colonel walked lame footed through the mud and he certainly might have been taken for anything but a Lieutenant-Colonel of Dragoons." Though few in the regiment at this time could have had much inclination toward philosophical ruminations, the difficulties of the march to Kingston reflected an important transformation in the 19th’s service in North America. It was a passage not merely from one town to another, or even one province to another, but a passage from a peaceful, civilian existence, to a warlike, military one. During the fourteen days the regiment spent in the wilderness, the dragoons shed --- if not by fire then by mud and water --- the comforts of the life they had enjoyed in Montreal, and were reminded of the often brutish, often deadly profession in which they were engaged. This transformation was reinforced by the persistence with which the enemy made his presence felt. While alarms had been occasional, often false affairs, in Montreal, on the route to Kingston they became both more serious and more frequent. Arriving at Prescott on 19 July, Lang found the town in the state of alarm after the capture of several British provision bateaux by an American gunboat that morning. Two days later the officers and men were woken by the sound of angry gunfire from out on the Lake. The 19th’s destination likewise more symbolized their purpose in the Canadas, than had their point of origin. Kingston was first and foremost a military town. Closer to the front than Montreal, its population possessed a proportionately greater number of soldiers than did the merchant town on the St. Lawrence. Indeed, such was the abundance of military uniforms in the town that at the beginning of April a captain and sergeant from the American army were, in a passing disguise, able to conduct a tour of the town unnoticed.16 The Dragoons therefore knew that the reception in this military town would not be one of awe, as had been the case in Quebec or Montreal, but of critical profession judgment. It was due to this fact that, lame as he, his officers, men, and mounts were, tired and wet, dirty and hungry as all must have been, Colonel O’Neill delayed the regiment’s entry into the town until 10 p.m. on 21 July. His intent, as Lang makes clear, was to avoid the necessity of presenting a corps in such wretched condition to the cold eye of his colleagues at Army headquarters. This passage was reinforced once the regiment had settled into its quarters. In the absence of the strawberry parties hosted by the Baroness Lougueil, the social rounds of Kingston had a distinctly more military tone than had been the case in Montreal, as might have been intimated by the freshly arrived squadron Lang was surprised to find riding at anchor only a few yards from his window when he awoke on that first morning. During the four days that the regiment spent in Kingston, Lang was invited to dine with officers of the 100th Foot, and attend the launch of the brig Melville: On 26 July 1813, the regiment departed Kingston, and it soon became evident that the 19th’s transformation from a peaceable to a warlike footing was complete. Gone, with undoubtedly much relief to all concerned, animal as well as human, was the hellish terrain to be traversed. The Bay of Quinte was one of the most fertile and best settled parts of the upper province, while the lakeshore was formed of the greatest variety of prospects. Though the route followed the lakeshore, and the country principally wood and but thinly populated, the regiment record few if any of the difficulties they had experienced on its march to Kingston. If the threat from nature had diminished, that from man equally increased as the regiment moved away from Kingston: "we found ourselves in an enemy’s country and that it was necessary to advance with caution as the American fleet were active on the lake." This fact was driven home when the corps reached Pickering on 30 July, and were informed that a group of American prisoners of war had recently overpowered their guard and escaped across the lake. Within twenty-four hours, the proximity of the war would make itself so obvious that no one could deny it.